CenturyLink Privacy Notice Overview

When we provide our services, which include internet access, local and long distance telephone, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), television, additional voice, broadband and data services such as call routing and cloud computing, and alarm monitoring for your home or business, we necessarily obtain certain information about you. This information may include your name, address, email address, telephone, mobile and device numbers, date of birth, social security number, driver's license number, credit information, payment information, and contact information. We may also gather information about how you use our services. And some services, like alarm monitoring, require us to obtain additional information about your home or business, and how you would like to use the service.

Additionally, we gather some information from visitors to our websites and those who click on our internet ads, such as the visitor's operating system, location, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and what sites were visited immediately before or after our site. You can view additional information applicable to visitors to a CenturyLink website.

Recording, reviewing or monitoring of your interactions with CenturyLink. For quality assurance, training and online session analysis we sometimes review your interactions with us. This may include email correspondence, recorded conversations with our agents and recorded online sessions. We also save the text of "click to chat" sessions with our online sales and service consultants and may save screen shots when customers give our repair personnel remote access to their computers for technical support.

By using CenturyLink’s app, you agree to CenturyLink’s use of third-party analytics and monitoring software to record system and user actions within our app. We use this data to detect and resolve issues and to ensure that the app is functioning as designed within the user experience. Aggregated, anonymous statistical information and data that is not identifiable to any person or entity could be used by the third party for auditing, research and analysis purposes to operate and improve the system subject to contractual limits.

Network management. We use information generated on our networks to manage those networks, to plan for future development, and to keep our services running reliably and efficiently. For example, we monitor data to check for viruses, to control spam, to prevent attacks that might disable our services, to ensure that your traffic does not violate your subscriber agreement or our acceptable use policies, and to guard against other inappropriate or illegal activity. This may involve looking at the characteristics of our network traffic, such as traffic volumes, beginning and ending points of transmissions, and the types of applications being used to send traffic across our network. In limited circumstances, we need to look into the content of the data (such as the specific websites being visited, files being transmitted, or application being used) for the purposes described above, in circumstances when we are concerned about fraud or harassment, to repair a problem we detect or that a customer contacts us about, or when we are providing the content of broadband traffic to law enforcement which we only do as authorized by law.

You can see more detail about our information gathering practices.

We may use customer information to provide our services and keep you informed of changes to them, to market our services and sometimes those of others, and to plan improvements to the services we offer and the way we interact with our customers.

You can see more detail about our uses of customer information.

Yes, but we do so responsibly. CenturyLink is made up of a number of companies and we share information among them as permitted by applicable law. We also use other companies to help us market, sell and bill for our services, and we necessarily share information with them and we require these companies to keep your information confidential and secure. We share information with companies that give us credit evaluations (and let them use the information we give them to provide credit evaluation services for others), collect our unpaid bills, or provide other services to us such as advice on products or services our customers may be interested in. We may also allow companies to match information provided to them by their potential customers with name and address information in our databases to confirm the identity of their potential customers, and the length of time they have had service with us. Our contracts with those companies require them to keep the information safe and confidential.

We may share information with other companies if, for example, we anticipate merging, selling or transferring a portion of our business with or to them, or acquiring all or a portion of their business. Usually this information is about the characteristics of our business and groups of customers, but it could include information about specific customers.

Additionally, we give customer information to other carriers and service providers when they need the information to provide their services, bill for them or verify accounts, when they have our customer's consent, or when they have a legal right to the information. And we will also share information with another provider if we suspect fraud, harassment, a threat to their networks, or some other unlawful activity. We may also provide information to government agencies (other than law enforcement) to help with communications assistance programs, or to gain benefits for our company like lower mailing fees and to help ensure that our customers get their bills and other information from us more economically and reliably. And we share information with law enforcement when the law allows us to do so, such as in emergencies or to protect our rights and property, including our network and the networks of others. We also respond to lawful requests for information from both law enforcement and private parties. The law requires us to share names and phone numbers with emergency service providers, whether that information is publicly available in directories or not.

We also must share similar information with directory publishers (who publish white pages, yellow pages and other similar directories) and directory assistance providers (who provide telephone numbers or addresses to those asking for that information). In some cases we limit how this information is used. And in all cases these companies must honor restrictions you have asked for, such as that your information not be published or used for marketing.

If you have elected to have your name, address and telephone number published in white pages directories (which means that it will be public information), that information may be used by others for their own marketing or to create marketing lists. You can opt-out of inclusion on lists that may be used by others for marketing.

You can see more detail about our sharing of customer information.

You have some choices about what customer information we gather and how we use it.

• You can choose whether to be included in a published directory or directory assistance services. Under federal law, directory publishers and directory assistance providers must honor restrictions requested by our customers, such as that the information not be published or used for marketing.
  
  
• If you have elected to have your name, address and telephone number published in white pages directories (which means that it will be public information), we allow that information to be used by others for their own marketing or to create marketing lists. You can opt-out of inclusion on lists that may be used by others for marketing.
  
  
• You can choose not to receive telephone, direct mail, or email marketing messages from us.
   

You can see more detail about what choices customers have regarding the gathering and use of their information.

You may access information about yourself in three ways:

1. Through your bill, whether you receive it by mail or electronically.
   
   
2. If you are a residential customer and have a My CenturyLink account, it shows service information and may provide usage information as well. Business customers may obtain information online through our My CenturyLink or Control Center.
   
   
3. You can also call us to discuss your account or to authorize someone else to talk with us about your services or other account details. 

You can see more detail about accessing customer information.

How long we keep different types of information is determined by business requirements and applicable state and federal laws and regulations.

We take the security of our customer information seriously. We do several things to protect it:

• We have administrative, physical and technical controls to safeguard it.
  
  
• We train our employees on the importance of protecting it.
  
  
• We require businesses that act on our behalf and have access to our information to keep information about you confidential and secure.
   

Like most companies, while we have security measures and policies in place to protect against the unauthorized access, misuse and disclosure of information under our control, we cannot guarantee that your information will never be disclosed in a manner inconsistent with our policies and practices or that our safeguards will prohibit all attempts to defeat these measures. If you think information about you or others has been disclosed without proper authorization, please contact our Privacy Office online, or write to us at:

Privacy Office
CenturyLink Legal
100 CenturyLink Drive
Monroe LA 71203

If you have questions about this notice, our practices, concerns about your personal information, or require assistance in managing your choices, please contact our Privacy Office online, or write to us at:

Privacy Office
CenturyLink Legal
100 CenturyLink Drive
Monroe LA 71203